Video: Man recalls 'violent crash' with tourist driver

(YouTube)
(YouTube)

A foreign tourist is to appear in court tomorrow after a head on smash near Queenstown.

The accident was all caught on an in-car camera with the rental car appearing to be on the wrong side of the road.

The scene is every driver's worst nightmare all caught on camera. The moment Queenstown film maker Gary Strangman rounded a corner and was hit head on by a tourist van near Glenorchy.

The impact broke Mr Strangman's sternum and totalled both vehicles, and he says it could have been even worse.

"About three minutes after the crash, three motorcyclists arrived on the scene all in a group together, so had they been where I was there'd have been deaths."

Mr Strangman's vehicle has been written off and he won't be able to work for six weeks.

The driver of the rental car, a 45-year-old foreign tourist has been charged by Queenstown police with careless driving causing injury.

Mr Strangman wants more to be done to test the suitability of visiting Chinese drivers before they take to New Zealand roads.

"Some of the drivers have very obviously never driven at all on a road, let alone a gravel road. It's just not safe to have them on our roads at all, there needs to be some method of testing them before they get given a car."

The Chinese Consulate in Christchurch agrees more needs to be done.

The Chinese New Year festival starts next week and about 70,000 visitors are expected to flood in from Asia.

The Consulate has just had thousands of brochures printed explaining basic road rules to be given out to drivers before they hit the road.

The first point mentioned in this brochure is keep left, a basic safety rule that could have easily prevented this crash caught on camera from ever happening.

Newshub.